The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is more than a natural history museum. In fact, it?s also consistently rated as one of the world?s top 10 zoos and botanical gardens. Careful to point out that the museum exhibits and displays a hundred acres of Sonoran desert instead of ?collecting? it, the museum serves as home to 840 arthropods from 78 different types, over 10,700 fishes, 122 amphibians, 86 different types of reptiles (361 specimens), 241 birds from 72 different types, and more than a hundred mammals. As for its botanical garden, the museum offers over 40,000 plants that belong to 1,300 different varieties and do not include the many grass species found in the museum?s grassland exhibit. Another popular exhibit at the museum is its collection of fossils, minerals, and gems found in the Sonoran Desert.